And we’ll know Zduriencik from his off-season
Manager
This will consume a huge portion of press attention until it’s resolved, but it’s not that important. While the manager’s the public face of the team in some ways, and I’m sure we’ll hear about the importance of their ability to run a harmonious or winning clubhouse, there are really three kinds of managers:
– the good
– almost everyone
– the really bad
Almost every manager uses the same in-game tactics, more or less: it’s a matter of where they fall on the spectrum. Most managers follow the traditional book: they try to steal a little more often than is productive, sacrifice too often, and so on. The difference between the best and the worst managerial tactician is maybe twenty runs a year, and I mean utter incompetence against devious genius. And Earl’s not managing these days. They can be important decisions that backfire, but even then, bringing in one reliever over another might mean the chance of a game-losing hit goes from 30% to 20%.
The big difference a manager makes is in filling out a lineup card every day, putting the best team on the field, resting players, balancing offense and defense according to the needs of the day, and bullpen management.
I’ve always favored hiring someone with a lot of managerial experience, even if that’s in the minors. The failure rate of coach conversions is remarkably high. There’s no reason to risk it: there are tons of qualified candidates in the minors who’ve been grinding it out, and they’ve already dealt with more clubhouse madness than they could talk about.
Anyway:
Good sign: Anyone with more than a couple seasons under their belt. Bonus points for smarts, reputation, good player relationships, and so on.
Bad sign: Ned Yost.
Ibanez
Raul’s been the public face of the franchise and also one of the lesser problems. His defense in left is so bad it negates much of the value of his bat. He really should be a DH. As much as Ibanez’s swing is well-suited to Safeco, left-fielders and designated hitters, can be had on the cheap. The team’s really better off taking the draft pick. But the temptation to bring back one of the only productive and popular players of the last few years will be there.
Good sign: they offer Ibanez arbitration (and if he accepts, put him at DH)
Bad sign: Ibanez re-signed to a multi-year deal for a lot of money.
Bloomquist
Local boy and Ibanez’s public face assistant. Gets huge applause. Can’t hit. Can field decently. Can steal a base. Equivalent skills cost major league minimum. Like Ibanez, there will be organizational sentiment in his favor.
Good sign: Bloomquist signs a super-cheap deal or they let him move on.
Bad sign: Bloomquist gets a multi-year deal for too much money.
Left-field, DH
The team’s spent a lot of money these last few years for proven middle-of-the-order professional hitters. This is a poor use of resources. And in left they’ve punted defense entirely, though Ibanez was at least affordable.
Good sign: they bring in some cheap and effective players, especially if they make a break with the past and try to put together a nice platoon or pay for a glove in left field.
Bad sign: spending a ton of money on name players
First base
Like left field and DH, there’s no need to spend a ton of money on first basemen. My friend Jonah Keri, who is one of the most cheerful and even-keeled people you’ll ever meet, gets all agitated every time a team gives out one of these deals (“Free agent contracts never work! Never!” he says, though obviously he’s exaggerating a bit. But not much.) Fortunately,
Good sign: someone cheap and effective. Or Clement moving to first.
Okay: Bringing some rent-a-bat in for a one-year
Bad sign: One of those Mo Vaughn-style deals.
Center field
Wlad’s glove can’t play in center, and he’s not hitting. Reed plays but he’s not hitting either. But centerfielders who can hit don’t come cheap.
Good sign: someone who plays defense. Hitting would be nice, but cheap-and-effective fly catcher would be fine.
Bad sign: a season of Wlad, or a big contract to an immobile hitter.
Middle infield
Lopez and Betancourt have both turned into stone-gloved horror shows out there. But how do you solve this kind of a problem? Is it even a problem? They’re both cheap, and young. But then Betancourt’s defense went terrible and we’ve already seen him as good as he’s going to get, offensively. Lopez at least bounced back offensively — but his defense is so bad it makes him an overall liability. Do they dare hire a glove to play one or both positions and punt one of the two to another team?
Good sign: the team goes into next season with some kind of improvement at one or both positions
Bad sign: things get worse somehow
Catcher
They’re not likely to do anything about catching this season. They’ve got Johjima under contract and a host of backup options, even if they move Clement from behind the plate. I bet this is way down on the organizational to-do list.
Bench
They’ve got some internal options to sort through, but it’d be great to pick up, say, a good fourth outfielder, and if they toss Bloomquist, they’ll need a backup middle infielder.
Good sign: nice complementary pickups
Bad sign: Cairo comes back on a two-year, $5m deal
Starting pitching
Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh. Cleaning this mess up would make anyone wince. Z may have the rotation declared a Superfund site. After all, it’s abandoned, hazardous waste is there… anyway.
Good sign: managing to get rid of one or more of the Washburn/Silva/Batista contracts. Signing some good reclamation or rehab projects for insurance or back of the rotation.
Bad sign: A huge contract to someone who sucks. Or, while we’re at it, a Washburn extensions.
Relief pitching
They don’t need to do much.
Good sign: if anything, small, nice pickups to supplement the current group
Bad sign: huge deals to veteran relievers
In all of these things, we’ll see some patterns emerge:
– How does he evaluate and value offense?
– How does he evaluate and value defense?
– Do things like clutch hitting, veteranosity, professional hitting, previous role experience, and the like make a difference?
– How much are they worth?
– Similarly, how are pitchers evaluated? For instance, are we going to see Silva/Washburn-style deals, or will our new GM possibly look for candidates who were unlucky in things beyond their control?
– Relatively, where’s the payroll at hand going towards?
– How good is he at evaluating and signing freely available talent: the minor league free agents, the rehab projects, the rebound candidates?
– How does he compare a free agent option to those freely available players?
– How well does he do in dealings with other teams?
… and on, and on.
Up next: looking forward to organizational changes.
Comments
35 Responses to “And we’ll know Zduriencik from his off-season”
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as we already know, from Armstrong’s comments at the presser.
Jim Street has some more quotes from Z about managers
If I even get a whiff that Z is off shopping for big name free agents I swear to God I’ll continue to make idle threats about disowning the team.
What evidence is there that Lopez’s defense was so bad in ’08? Just wondering. He checks out on a range between “perfectly acceptable” and “very good” if you look at +/-, RZR, and FR.
Let’s see how much the “brain trust” meddles with things. For example, maybe Z wants to get rid of Ibanez but the two-headed monster of Chu & Ho decides he’s too important to lose for PR reasons.
I am wondering how much your evaluations of need at each position are going to change radically from trades. There is a good chance that Zduriencik is going to use this offseason to have a fire sale and bring talent into the organization. Honestly, I think that is the best way forward. But there should at least be a few guys who are contributors (eg someone like Beltre) who will be traded and open up additional needs. Your post focuses on additions, but there could be a lot of subtractions.
The huge thing missing from your list is who Zduriencik decides to trade, and what he gets in return. I think this offseason will be more about adding as much talent as possible to the organization than simply filling in holes in the 25-man roster.
Also, one thing I would really like to see from the new manager is putting Ichiro back in CF. That was the single worst decision McLaren made during his brief tenure. It is a lot easier to find a decent player for RF or LF, along with Balentien, or just use Reed in LF. If Reed isn’t starting, he makes a pretty solid 4th OFer. Ichiro in CF makes it a lot easier to put together a good lineup. To me, that is a no brainer.
What I will find interesting is teams calling us about trades. If Bavasi made even one trade that worked out during his entire time here, I’d like to hear it. Do teams call us up figuring they can continue to fleece us? (Olivo has learned to hit! Really! Give us Morrow!) Or do teams realize that now they might actually have to offer us something of value in trades? (Well gee Jack, I thought that Carlos Guillen for nothing was a great deal. So what I want to propose is — What? You don’t agree? Let me get back to you.)
BillP-
Have you ever watched a Mariners game? Lopez is overweight, has no range, and doesn’t make the simple plays…
Sometimes you don’t need fancy stats and computers to know when someone is good or bad…
“Have you ever watched a Mariners game? Lopez is overweight, has no range, and doesn’t make the simple plays…
Sometimes you don’t need fancy stats and computers to know when someone is good or bad…” [sorry – I messed up the block quote]
The assessment may be true, but isn’t that kind of evaluation exactly what Dave and DMZ have tried to school us away from (the whole “Jeter makes flashy diving plays so he must be good” kind of approach)? I don’t know enough about the metrics BillP quotes to assess their validity, but surely we shouldn’t dismiss them quite so easily.
DMZ, how would you respond to BillP’s question?
All I’m saying is that saying that he is good because some metrics say he is, isn’t the only way to look at it.
It’s like saying that Ibanez is a good outfielder because he doesn’t make errors and he has a lot of assists. The metrics don’t show how many runs he costs us because he doesn’t get to balls.
We can watch him out there and we know he sucks.
There has to be a combination of both to truly evaluate the player.
Exactly.
In the outfield I don’t think that Wlad in RF, Ichiro in CF and Reed in either LF or 4th OF with a player being brought in for the other OF spot is bad. With all the other problems I think that Either Ichiro or Reed should be in Center most every day. For the time being do you think it’s necessary to change the OF more than that?
Teixeira seems like a good pickup to way too many fans and I’d agree if his bat came with decent defense at CF, SS or 2nd. 1B is way too easy to find someone worth more wins per dollar than he will supply someone else with. It needs to be done right but there are many options for this spot that make sense.
On the middle infield problem something that I haven’t heard discussed is not moving either Lopez or Betancourt and bringing in a player that can play either position and somewhat platoon them with the new guy being a replacement option if needed. Betancourt and Lopez only have very slight platoon split differences with the higher being Vs. LH. Even guys that may be available in the rule 5 could work for that. Three players that may be available there are Brent Lillibridge, Martin Prado and Bobby Crosby and they do all have platoon splits of being better off RH. What do you think of those options?
Do you have a preference for getting rid of Silva, Batista or Washburn and what are the reasons?
The stat’s being discussed were Range related and speak exactly to a player getting to (or not) balls in their area of the field. They are designed to show (as accurately as can be done right now) how many runs/wins the player saves/costs you for balls they do/don’t get to over average.
You haven’t heard anyone discuss trading Lopez, bringing in a new middle infielder, and shifting Betancourt over to second? Man, if only I had written a couple of really long articles talking about possible scenarios for rebuilding this roster recently…
No, Dave, I read those…What I haven’t heard discussed is keeping both.
I just went back and looked at your “Offseason Plan to Win” and saw that his fix for the OF was Jeremy Reed (who has a career split of off RH:.275/.330/.392, LH:.157/.225/.208.) platooning in CF with Reed Johnson (Vs. RH:.268/.327/.385, LH:.313/.376/.460.) I think that’d make a good LF platoon with Ichiro in CF and Wlad in RF. The blow it up plan included Baldelli who doesn’t have so much of a split…
And sometimes those fancy stats help us separate our preconceptions from reality. Disparaging people for asking a good question does not make us smarter. Answering that question with facts from either scouting or statistics (or preferably both), makes us have more knowledgeable than before.
Two examples:
Mariners 2B in 2008:
Lopez, 1229 Innings, .821 RZR (5th of 9 qualified in AL, 8/17 in MLB), 51 plays Out of Zone (1st of 9 qualified in AL)
Valbuena, 125 Innings, .721 RZR, 0 plays OOZ
Boom-boom, 37 Innings, .800 RZR, 0 OOZ
So… the stats tell us that Lopez is about league average defensively in 2008. In 2007 he was 7th of 10 in the AL (10/22 in MLB) in RZR at .839. To our eyes he looks like he isn’t moving well, but the numbers tell us he’s moving fine… Maybe he gets a better jump than we see, maybe he’s not as bad with the glove as we think, maybe the other options out there aren’t what we think they are. Regardless, at least in the RZR system (from THT’s website), he’s doing fine. Not great, but with his bat and salary, talk of replacing him seems premature.
Mariners CF in 2008:
Ichiro, 601 Inn, .902 RZR, 38 OOZ
Reed, 453 Inn, .950 RZR, 36 OOZ
Balentien, 218 Inn, .878 RZR, 17 OOZ
Boom-Boom, 161 Inn, .875 RZR, 13 OOZ
Reed would have been 2/11 in the AL and 3/21 in MLB had he played the full year at those rates. Ichiro would have been 8/11 in the AL and 16/21. Ichiro had a .893 RZR in 1339 Innings in 2007 so the numbers for him are fairly stable. Reed’s numbers have been increasing over time, .866 in ’04, .873 in ’05, .915 in ’06, .950 in ’08.
So here is where statistical analysis helps (if anyone can add in plus/minus or other relevant stats to the discussion, I would appreciate it):
Lopez was the best 2nd basemen on the team last year. He was around league average defensively while a plus bat. He’s cheap and he should definitely be back next year.
Ichiro is not a league average center fielder. I don’t know why everyone wants to put him there when Reed is clearly superior to him defensively. Can we please stop with the Ichiro in CF love-fest unless someone can come forward with a concrete reason to have one?
Dave/DMZ/Conor – any chance we can do a position by position season-end round-up? Look at offensive and defense from each position and try to determine what to do in the off-season?
P.S. Betancourt was 18/20 (qualified MLB Rank) at SS in 2008 at .799 RZR, 18/25 in 2007 at .802, 18/24 in 2006 at .807, at did not qualify in 2005 but finished the year at .795. He’s always been and probably always will be around a .800 SS. This will always be well below league average. Can we please trade him please? Someone will take him and we can go out and acquire a better SS.
Defensive metrics are still really rough, even the best ones. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
Because the option that appears better without reworking more than is needed this year (trading Wlad/move to DH and acquiring 2 OF) puts Ichiro in LF. If he’s willing to do that or you’d rather be looking for 2 OF then there’s an option that makes more sense. Reed isn’t an every day player any way you slice it though, not with platoon splits like that.
Jeff-
I understand that they’re rough. I was just responding to bako’s previous comments to BillP.
Attacking the use of defensive metrics is – to me at least – anti-knowledge. Instead of attacking them, we should do the following…
1) Compile all available metrics for each player (at least on the M’s to start).
2) Compare metrics to different subjective measures.
3) Try to determine where they differ and if there are systematic reasons for the differences. If there is some reason, we can pick metrics that seem to fit some positions better than others, work to make revised metrics that work better, or if all the metrics agree, re-analyze our subjective measurements.
It’s seemed to me that Lopez wasn’t getting to as many balls, but I am not a qualified scout. I know defensive metrics are imperfect and that there are often certain range-based stat that love one player while another stat hates them. I just try to look at all of the defensive stats and compare because they are probably somewhere in between. I’d love to be as certain by just using my eyes and memory but they are more imperfect than these defensive metrics we’re discussing.
Dave-
I still don’t understand how shifting Betancourt to SS helps the M’s. He’s about 2 years older than Lopez (just under 22 months to be exact), would be an unknown improvement defensively at 2B , and is a much worse hitter (especially considering the age difference).
It seems that keeping Lopez at 2nd, bringing in a new SS, and having Yuni back them both up if Boom-Boom leaves seems like a much better solution for the team. If Yuni is a huge improvement in his time at 2nd, then you have time to evaluate them both before trading away Lopez.
What about trading Ichiro to help rebuild the farm? His trade value is only going to go down.
If Raul leaves and Ichiro stays, what about moving Ichiro to LF (or even DH) to get a traditional RF bat (i.e. any power at all)?
What about trading Beltre to help rebuild the farm and sticking Morse / Lopez there?
Or throwing Lopez in on a Washburn trade to sweeten the deal and get him the hell out of here?
Never ever trade Ichiro. Never. Ever.
would be an unknown improvement defensively at 2B
The relative defensive value of players shifting positions is knowable, and is roughly known (other than catcher). Betancourt at second would be an improvement over Lopez, and probably average or above for the position, instead of a below-average shortstop. I’m not excited about taking this approach because of the offensive difference, but Lopez is weak enough that the defensive comparison isn’t really debatable.
The offensive difference is really overstated. They’re basically the same hitter – Lopez has a tad more power, Betancourt is a bit faster. The difference is marginal.
As far as defense, what Mike said.
Agreed.
We KNOW the defensive measures are rough and are in need of further development and refinement. But that doesn’t mean they’re useless.
If they’re leading us to a counter-intuitive conclusion about Lopez, let’s re-examine the data (both the stats and the subjective matters).
Keep in mind, though, this is just a season’s worth of data…and I haven’t seen all the fielding data, so….
OK, so how about Lopez at first and Betancourt at second? (Lopez doesn’t want to play first but then I don’t want to cover business group meetings that doesn’t mean I don’t.) Then we can plug the shortstop hole. The only problem with that, of course, is what we endured at shortstop (remember Pokey Reese?) and catcher (I won’t ask you to remember any of those, it’s too painful) before Yuni and Joh came along.
Lopez can’t hit well enough to be worthwhile at first base.
And my point about defensive metrics shouldn’t have been interpreted as “anti-knowledge”; I simply wanted to point out that saying “Lopez is fine defensively because these metrics say so” is a flawed position to take.
Scouting (and by extension, things like Tangotiger’s fan scouting reports) are the best way to evaluate defense at this point.
Said fan scouting report, from 2007, had Lopez as slightly above average (58) in a position-neutral context, and he’s regressed fairly significantly since then.
They’re basically the same hitter – Lopez has a tad more power, Betancourt is a bit faster.
My argument would be that Lopez has more room for growth (both in terms of age and skillset). That makes me more willing to write off his awful 2007 and accept his 2008 as real development with the potential for more. Betancourt, on the other hand, I think we agree that he is what he is and will never be anything else.
Aside from that, I’ll grant the offensive difference isn’t huge. But that’s why I would consider a choice that pure statistical projection probably doesn’t favor.
Stone talks about Z hiring some Brewer assistants here
Maybe there’s hope.
Here’s an article about Blengino:
Meet SABR Member Tony Blengino
Nothing but good on the Blengino hire.
Wow, awesome news on him bringing Blengino over.
And he has just let Fontaine go… Maybe Fields won’t be signing…
I’m betting he gives Blengino Fontaine’s job.
I would actually kinda prefer that they don’t sign Fields and just take the extra pick in next year’s draft. Fields would be a nice addition to the bullpen, but bullpen help just shouldn’t be this team’s priority at this point.
So I forgot about this for two days after I posted it. Guess I started some good discussion.
First, defensive metrics aren’t nearly as “rough” as they were just a couple years ago. They’re still not perfect, but they’re a lot better.
Second, yes, “the runs Ibanez costs [the Mariners] because he doesn’t get to balls” are exactly what the metrics are designed to show you.
Drei, on +/- (my personal fave, mostly because it’s compiled by guys watching every play of every game, so the usual “you don’t watch him play” retort really doesn’t apply at all), Lopez came in at 0, or exactly average, after being +9 and +4 the two previous years. Betancourt, meanwhile, has gone -3, -10, -19 the past three years.
Ichiro was at -9 in center this year after +4 in ’07 and +6 in limited action in ’06. Looks like an excellent RF who’s a bit stretched in CF, though his true level might be around average (but almost certain to start slipping soon if it’s not already).